Handling Negativity & Criticism

I think it’s easy to say you “just don’t care” but I don’t believe many people have truly mastered it, I know I am not there yet. I think if you are the type of person who is a “perfectionist” and who likes to make everyone happy, when you can’t please people or people don’t like you, you tend to take it personally. I decided to spend some time reading up on way to handle criticism and I think I will touch on the particular points that I found helpful and will start working on moving forward.

Note: when I mention these points they are NOT things I have accomplished but will be working on and hope you will too.

Firstly, you can’t expect to be public, put yourself out there and not get “hate” if you want to get none, you shouldn’t use social media as an outlet. The more you grow or the more success you or your work gets the more exposed it will be and the more likely for it to be critiqued. So, this being said we have one of two options: stop growing as a person and keep to yourself out of the public eye OR learn how to learn from negativity and criticism instead of allowing it to bring you down.

Let’s focus on the latter:

1. Let the criticism be an opportunity to grow. Be honest with yourself and if there is truth behind what has been than acknowledge it and lean to work on this moving forward.

2. Let it challenge your beliefs. This will allow you to see things from a different perspective and likely will give you some insight into things you were missing before and expend your own thinking.

3. If this criticism hits you hard perhaps there is something that is unresolved from a prior period of your life that needs attention. Sometimes the affect you have on others might not be the one you intended and this is a point where you need to work on that, allowing it to align more with your beliefs.

4. Allow this to be a chance to become the bigger person. This will allow you to hear something you don’t like, feel an emotion you don’t like, deal with the emotion and move on allowing the experience to better you.

5. Allow it to improve your own self-confidence. Each time you can take negativity, learn from it and move forward your confidence will grow.

6. Don’t let some negativity get in the way of who you are and the dreams you are trying to achieve. Take it in, learn from it and again like I said move forward with pursuing your dreams.

7. Sometimes there isn’t anything that can be taken away from a person’s negativity and quite possibly it could be more so a reflection of what they are dealing with verses you or your work. Instead of responding upset or harshly recognize that this person might just be having a bad day and this really has nothing to do with you. Again, acknowledge this and move forward.

8. Don’t take it personally. There are so many different people in this world, different views, upbringings, beliefs, personalities NOT everyone will like you or what you are about and THAT IS OKAY. It makes us human.